Switch Dimensions

By Faith Chatham - December 23,
Sometimes we just simply need to tune out the clutter which sucks the air out of the room. When opening a social media wall or turning on the television fills up the space with despicable human excrement, it is beneficial to switch dimensions.

We can do that by focusing on friends and family, getting immersed in holiday chaos, or puttering in a garden. Seeing pet video's posted on Facebook is a relief these days.

I'm enjoying sitting in my sister's living room looking at her Christmas Tree and letting her serve me hot chocolate.

We are discussing making Bread Pudding for Christmas Dinner and Quiche for Christmas Eve Brunch. I've recommended drinking the rum instead of using it in pudding. This is a great break from continually hearing about the shut-down, realizing that children are sleeping under mylar blankest without toys or cherished, trusted adults to hold and comfort them this Christmas, that the Donald thinks his warped ways are progress and some in this nation are warped enough to agree with him.

This year I am especially appreciative of the efforts of the ACLU and other organizations who are working tirelessly to relieve some of the unnecessary suffering inflicted by our government on the innocent and upon the vulnerable.

It is comforting to sit with my sister and look at her Christmas Tree and remember the people who nurtured and protected us. I know we have battles to wage next year. We have women and children to rescue, politicians to support, and some to oppose. It will not be a year when we can sit passively, trusting that all will be well with our state, nation or the world if we leave things to others or to happenstance.

Tonight, it is necessary to switch dimensions for a few hours and enjoy the moment, even though I realize that many in this world are so threatened and frightened that they have little opportunity to enjoy anything.  I will fight for them with all my might once I tune-out for a few hours the bombardment of the despot who sucks the air out of space where he neither belongs nor understands, nor values. Soon, by some means, we will be free of him. Until then, we persevere, we resist, we write, we share, we verify, we study, we research, and we value those who are discounted and sorely abused.

Faith's Christmas Eve Leek Quiche

1 stalk of Leeks cut up
salt and pepper to taste
2 pads of butter
1/8 cup cheddar cheese
1/2 cup mozzarella cheese
6 eggs beaten throughly
1 pie crust


Saute leeks in butter
Add to beaten eggs
Add grated cheddar and mozzarella cheese, salt and parsley to the beaten eggs.
Pour into prepared pie crust.
Bake in heated 350 degree oven until the eggs are done and the pie crust is lightly brown.
Taste good served warn or chilled.

Faith's Leeks and Potato Casserole

1 stalk of Leeks, cut up

Five potatoes, sliced thin long wise

1 can evaporated milk

1 cup mozzarella cheese

1 teaspooon to 1 tablespoon fresh parsley, chopped
1/2 cup cheddar cheese
Salt to taste
Crushed black pepper to taste.

Wash and salt the sliced potatoes.
Mix them in a casserole dish with the sliced leeks
Sprinkle in the shredded mozzarella cheese.
Pour in one can of evaporated milk
Sprinkle one layer of shredded cheddar cheese on top of the casserole

Bake in a 350 degree oven until the potatoes are soft (about 30 to 40 minutes).


When the cheese on top melts, take out of oven and cover with a second layer of cheddar cheese and sprinkle lightly with crushed black pepper.  Return to oven and bake until layer of cheese on top melts.

Cool slightly before serving.

Resistance and Insistence Poetry released by Wise Woman Press

By Faith Chatham -- Feb. 3, 2018

This is not our grandparents generation's volume of sonnets!

Not everyone can turn the frustrations and disgust we live through into poetry. San Antonio Tri Centennial poet, Carolyn Chatham's anthology of Resistance poetry is not a collection of flowery lyrics. She tells readers that "I am not the sweet old woman that you think I am." Her words flow from the place human beings encounter when they won't be quiet and take it any more.

The title "Those Bones That Float About" comes from the East Texas idiom used when a person looks you straight in the eye and says: "I've got a bone to pick with you!" These are not words that are used lightly, and they are not prompted by trivilities. They spring when harm has seeped past the coverings to the very foundations of our existence. Once picked dry,  they surface and cannot be hidden.

Released by Wise Woman Press  Carolyn's book, Those Bones That Float About, is available for pre-order on  on Amazon.com, at https://bit.ly/CarolynChatham.

School shootings, fires in California, Hurricane Harvey, gender, racial, economic and immigration discrimination inspire her poetry. One poem, Let's Make America Great Again, is to Colin Kaepernick.

Let’s Make America Great Again

Let’s make America great again,

bring back those good old days.

A man was head of his household.

Kids all toed the line.

A boy could be a boy and fight,

and we all got along just fine.

A man could be a man back then

so long as he was white.

Make America great again,

Let’s put the lid back on.

A baby every year or so

will keep those women home.

Plenty of eager hands back then

to mow our lawns and clean.

No laws to tell us who to hire,

or serve or educate.

Let’s make America great again,

restore the proper order.

Let’s keep those undesirables

on their side of the border.

Let’s make America great again,

bring back the holocaust.

The hanging trees are yearning for

the fruit that they have lost.

I will not stand for this,

This living in the past.

It's not "make America great again."

It's make her great at last.

I will not stand for this.

Take a knee, America.

We should not stand for this.

© 2017 Carolyn Chatham Used by Permission

In The Commander-in-Chief Eats Cake, she makes her opinion of the current resident of the White House clear.

The Commander-in-Chief Eats Cake

The Commander-in-Chief eats cake and smacks his lips, commenting how great it is

from his Mar-Lago resort.

The dark chocolate and orange skin are Halloweenish,

a rotten pumpkin shell.

He shovels dark icing

down a pink throat between sniffs.

His pudgy fingers and reptilian tongue lick brown goop from his too small mouth

centered obscenely on his bloated tangerine face.

While he gorges on cake,

bombs level mountains in Afghanistan,

vaporizing people he has never met or talked with,

whose names he cannot pronounce.

People who may or may not have been terrorists.

People whose children, wives, nieces and nephews are now most certainly terrorists.

Unconcerned for life unlike his own,

he licks his fingers

and announces the “Mother of All Bombs”

has been dropped on Iraq.

Or was it Syria?

Or maybe Afghanistan?

Anyway, it was one of those countries

where he doesn’t have a hotel

and where the people aren’t pink and orange like him

and nobody is asking about his ties to Russia today.

He is a spectacle, an alien thing, surely not human.

He belongs in a side show or science laboratory,

an alien life-form to be studied

then sent back to its cell,

and safely locked away.

© 2017 Carolyn Chatham Used by Permission